Hi!
Not really sure about all the functionality Crystal Reports brought to the table, but it seems that it was in heavy use during the 90's - I do not know that status of this tool today.
I am taking over an old VB6-application using Crystal Reports, had experience with Java's Jasperreports in the past. My Guess is that you were able to create a PDF-layout and link that to fields in a database and then you have som API to call that template when pressing 'create PDF' / 'print' in your application ....
I can find this Wikipedia-article about Crystal Reports : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Reports
Where there is a suggestion using SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)
So is SSRS the way to go , or is one able to continure using Crystal reports ( free or not ?)
best, i